By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN

Published: September 11, 2013

MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.

`Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.

From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.

No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.

The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.

We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.

I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.

If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Declassified CIA papers establish that the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953 was carried out under CIA direction as part of U.S. foreign policy. The West has a similar plan in Syria.

Newly declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents have now conclusively revealed the role of American and British secret services in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran 60 years ago. Another set of unconnected declassified CIA documents released around the same time has also revealed that the CIA had operated clandestine American U-2 surveillance flights from an Indian base in Odisha. Permission to do so was given by none other than the redoubtable Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, after his meeting with the American President, John F. Kennedy. Nehru was reeling from the debacle of the 1962 war with China and, according to declassified documents accessed some years ago, had even sent two desperate letters to Kennedy asking for military help in the wake of the 1962 war.

Newly declassified CIA documents reveal that the CIA operated clandestine U-2 surveillance flights from an Indian base in Odisha.

The revelations about the secret ties between the Indian and American Intelligence agencies since the early 1960s did not get much traction in the international media. The bigger story was about the CIA’s documents that focussed on its role in ensuring regime change in Iran. The events in 1953 dramatically changed the course of history in West Asia. From the very beginning it was evident that the CIA was in the forefront of the destabilisation programme that was launched against Iran in the early 1950s after the government under Mohammed Mossadegh tried to gain full control over its energy resources. Mossadegh was overthrown in a military coup on August 19, 1953, and the Shah of Iran, who became the West’s poster boy in the region, went on to rule until 1979. A popular revolt against the Shah led to his ouster and the Islamic Republic took the place of the despised monarchy. Mossadegh was a secular nationalist with strong ties with the Iranian “Tudeh” Left Party.

Mohammed Mossadegh (right) speaking to C.G.K. Reddy, visiting Rajya Sabha member from India, in Tehran shortly before he was overthrown in a military coup on August 19, 1953. Photo:THE HINDU ARCHIVES

According to the declassified document, the Western media had, at the CIA’s instigation, demonised Mossadegh as an “unstable, intemperate and unreliable” ally of the West in the Cold War. The internal CIA documents tell the real story. “The target of this policy of operation, Muhammad Mossadeq [sic] was neither a mad man nor an emotional bundle of senility as he was so often pictured in the foreign press; however he had become so committed to the ideals of nationalism that he did things that could not have conceivably helped his people even in the best and most altruistic of worlds. In refusing to bargain—except on his own uncompromising terms—with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, he was in fact defying the professional politicians of the British government. These politicians believed with good reason that cheap oil for Britain and high profits for the company were vital to their national interests,” according to an excerpt from the recently released declassified document. The rapacious Western attitude towards the region has evidently not changed. The “blood for oil” wars staged to secure Kuwait in the 1990s and Iraq in 2003 are illustrations.

The CIA report underlines the fact that the much-vaunted Western media were putty in its hands. It said that most of the media glossed over the key fact that the coup that overthrew Mossadegh “was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government”. This is the first time that the CIA has openly admitted to using propaganda, bribing officials and organizing anti-government demonstrations to undermine a legitimately elected government.

Washington tried similar tactics in other countries in the region before it succeeded in bringing about a regime change in Iran. For instance, the U.S. had a role in ensuring Syria’s independence in 1946. The U.S. thwarted France’s move to reclaim its colonial legacy in the region after the Second World War. But relations between Damascus and Washington started deteriorating almost immediately after the Syrian parliament vetoed the passage rights for the Arabian American Oil Company pipeline through its territory. The Americans had wanted oil from Saudi Arabia to be transported to the Mediterranean through Syria. Syrian lawmakers were angry with the U.S. for its prompt recognition of the state of Israel. The U.S. President, Harry Truman, retaliated by orising the staging of a military coup in Syria by the CIA, the very first coup in the region, in March 1949. The Syrian Prime Minister, Shukri al-Quwaitli, was overthrown by the army’s Chief of Staff, General Husni al-Zaim. Another coup followed in the same year, resulting in the assassination of General Marshall-Zaim.

Civilian rule was restored in 1955 with al–Quwatli again heading the government. The Syrian nationalists had ensured that the coveted American pipeline did not materialise. They instead steered the country to a very close relationship with Egypt. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt had already emerged as the hero of pan-Arabism by then. The Dwight Eisenhower administration in Washington once again got busy plotting against Syria. A destabilization plan, code-named “Operation straggle”, was formed. It involved the staging of armed incidents along the border with Turkey and the arming of tribes to fight alongside right-wing groups opposed to the nationalistic goals espoused by Arab socialists.

Documents discovered in 2004 reveal a joint CIA-MI6 plan approved by Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (right) to overthrow the Syrian government in 1957.

The second attempt at regime change also failed as the British, the French and the Israelis, who were supposed to help in the efforts to overthrow the Syrian government, were too preoccupied with the 1957 Suez Canal crisis. However, the most important reason, as Eisenhower noted in 1958, was the high level of suspicion the Syrian public had exhibited towards the U.S. and other Western powers. “The trouble is that we have a campaign of hatred against us, not by the government but by the people,” Eisenhower is quoted as saying in recently declassified official papers. According to the declassified reports, there is a “consensus narrative” that is widely held among the Syrian people that “foreign conspiracies have sought to undermine Syria in the past”.

Documents discovered in 2004 reveal a joint CIA-MI6 plan approved by Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to overthrow the Syrian government in 1957. The documents were unearthed by a British academic, Mathew Jones, who teaches international history at the University of London. The details of the plan were found in the private papers of Duncan Sandys, who had served as Defence Secretary under Macmillan. The plan included staging border incidents and the assassination of three key leaders. A coalition government consisting of Communists and Baathists had come to power in Damascus, overthrowing a pro-Western military dictatorship. The plan called for the setting up of a “Free Syria Committee” and the “arming of political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities”. The “preferred plan” to overthrow the Syrian government of the time was specific in its details.

Duncan Sandys, who was Macmillan’s Defence Secretary. The plan, whose details were found in his private papers, included the assassination of three key leaders

“In order to facilitate the action of the liberative forces, reduce the capabilities of the Syrian regime to organize and direct its military actions, to hold losses and destruction to the minimum, and to bring about desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention and in the light of the circumstances existing at the time,” the Sandys papers revealed. The three leaders officially targeted for assassination by Washington and London were Abdel Hamid al-Sarraj, the head of Syrian military intelligence, Afif al-Bizri chief of the Syrian general staff, and Khalid Bakhdash, the leader of the Syrian Communist Party

.

The “preferred plan” spelt out other covert actions that had to be undertaken to achieve the goal of regime change. “Once a political decision is taken to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, the CIA is prepared and Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) (MI6) will attempt to mount more sabotage and ‘coup de main’ incidents within Syria working through contacts and individuals.”

The report went on to add that if the coup plotters were successful in carrying out their mission and the necessary degree of chaos was achieved, then frontier incidents and border skirmishes would be staged with the help of friendly governments like neighboring Jordan and Iraq. Syria had to be made to “appear as the sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighboring governments”. The blueprint for action against the Syrian regime called on the CIA and the SIS “to use their capabilities in both the psychological and action fields to augment tension”. The document spelt out what this meant in actual terms. The territories of Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq would be used as staging posts to mount “sabotage, national conspiracies and various strong arm activities” inside Syria.

Interestingly, the plan also called for the formation of a “Free Syria Committee” along with the arming of “political factions with paramilitary and other actionable capabilities” within Syria. The CIA and the MI6 would coordinate to instigate internal uprisings, focusing on the minorities like the Druze and the Kurds, and stir up the Muslim Brotherhood in the rest of the country. The report conceded that the plan to replace the Communist/Baath government would not be welcomed domestically in Syria and that any pro-Western government that would replace it “would probably need to rely first upon repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power”. It is another matter that the plan could not fructify. The Jordanian and Iraqi governments refused to come fully on board.

In the thick of the action to overthrow the progressive government in Syria was the notorious CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt. He was the point man in the successful move to remove the government led by Mossadegh in Iran and reinstall the pro-Western Shah. The West feared that a pro-Soviet government in Syria would destabilize the neighborhood, whose countries at the time were all under friendly regimes. The important pipeline which delivered oil from Iraq to Turkey passed only through Syria in the 1950s and the 1960s. It was one of the main arteries controlling the flow of oil in those days. Roosevelt, in his memoirs, had written that the influential Secretary of State at the time, John Foster Dulles, was so enthused with its success in Iran that he wanted to replicate similar scenarios in other countries that had governments that the West found inimical to its interests. Dulles, one of the architects of the Cold War, had once described the ideology of non-alignment as an “immoral” concept.

The West is trying to implement a blueprint eerily similar to the one they had tried 60 years ago in Syria. The Americans have set up a front organisation, the Syrian National Council (SNC), that purports to speak for the Syrian people. Border and terror incidents have been manipulated to put the blame on the Syrian government. American planes have moved in fighters and arms from neighboring countries to be trained in Turkey.

In the first year of the conflict, the West did successfully implement many of the tactics they had envisaged in the 1957 plan. Many top decision-makers in the government, including the Syrian Ministry of Defense, were assassinated. Tribal militias and the Muslim Brotherhood were strengthened. However, as the West had discovered in the 1950s, the move to impose regime change has not been a popular one. The majority of the Syrian people, especially now, after the carnage they have witnessed, seem to have rallied behind the government.

Since September 11, 2001, the United States has initiated a number of wars in Muslim countries. These wars, which would be more correctly called massacres, have resulted in the deaths of countless innocent Muslims. In some cases, attempts have been made to present these aggressions in the “guise of humanitarian efforts” to promote “democracy.” But the limited public support for U.S. military action around the world goes back to the U.S. government claim that Muslims were responsible for 9/11. This claim is untrue and it is past time for people to recognize that fact.

There are many ways to see that Muslims were not responsible for 9/11. Author David Ray Griffin has previously made arguments in this regard.[1] As time goes on, however, more facts lead people to realize that claims of Muslim responsibility for terrorism in the U.S. should be highly suspect. These facts include that the October 2001 anthrax attacks were blamed on Muslims only to be later traced to a U.S. military facility and to non-Muslim, U.S. scientists. Moreover, a number of FBI-planned acts of terrorism since 2001 have been falsely attributed to young Muslims who were victims of appalling acts of entrapment by the FBI.[2]

According to the official account of 9/11, nineteen young Arab Muslims were responsible for the entirety of the mass murder that day. The FBI accused these young men within 72 hours of the attacks and, although the list changed slightly at first, it has remained the same since shortly after the attacks. To support the accusations, U.S. authorities pointed to passports that were found under implausible circumstances, luggage containing unbelievably convenient documents, and other dubious evidence.

“Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists’ identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, ‘Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the F.B.I. to chase.’”[3]

Years later, the 9/11 Commission Report(911CR) was written by a professional myth-maker, Phillip Zelikow, who was also a Bush Administration insider. Oddly enough, the outline for the report was written by Zelikow and his colleague Ernest May even before the investigation began. It is now widely accepted that the 9/11 Commission and the FBI did very poorly in terms of investigating most aspects of the attacks. In just one example, the FBI never even interviewed the people suspected of engaging in 9/11 insider trading.[4]

Despite the poor quality of the investigation, the 911CR used inflammatory language which focused on Muslims as “the enemy.” The Commission told us that “the enemy rallies broad support in the Arab and Muslim world by demanding redress of political grievances, but its hostility toward us and our values is limitless.” The Commission was being false and misleading when it made these statements, however, as the evidence shows that 9/11 was not a Muslim crime.

Muslims do not murder innocent people

The most obvious reason that the Commission was off-track is that Muslims do not murder innocent people. Some people find this statement outrageous. Of course Muslims murder innocent people, they say, that’s what al Qaeda does.

The problem is that, as a society, many of us have been trained to accept religion as a noncommittal affiliation or label. For example, many of the current U.S. leaders have engaged in mass murder around the world over the last ten years yet they still call themselves Christians. Anyone can see that they are not. Those who truly believe in God live by the laws of the religion they proclaim and Christians do not engage in wars of aggression or the torture and killing of other human beings.

The word “Muslim” is Arabic and literally means “one who submits (to God).” But Webster’s Dictionary defines a “Muslim” as an adherent to Islam. Being an adherent of Islam means to follow the teachings of the Holy Qu’ran. And according to the Qur’an, one of the greatest sins is to kill a human being who has committed no fault:

If someone kills another person – unless it is in retaliation for someone else or for causing corruption in the earth – it is as if he had murdered all mankind. (Surat al-Ma’ida: 32)

Defenders of the official myth might say that the 9/11 attacks can be seen as retaliation for the corruption in U.S. financial (WTC) and military (Pentagon) activities. Problems with that argument include the fact that it doesn’t absolve the 9/11 terrorists from having killed many innocent people, including children and dozens of Muslims.[5]It also doesn’t explain how many of the financial leaders in the WTC, and all of the top military leaders at the Pentagon, escaped with their lives.

Furthermore, polls in countries with large Muslim populations indicate that Muslims oppose the killing of civilians in warfare significantly more than non-Muslims do. People in Muslim countries “roundly reject attacks on civilians. Asked about politically-motivated attacks on civilians, such as bombings or assassinations, majorities in all countries–usually overwhelming majorities–take the strongest position offered by saying such violence cannot be justified at all.”[6]

To avoid this direct problem, some say that the alleged 9/11 hijackers were nominally Muslims. In other words, they were people who called themselves Muslims but who just didn’t follow this one requirement of the Qu’ran. This article doesn’t delve into the carefully cultivated phenomenon called “radical Islam,” but the evidence we have indicates that the men accused of hijacking planes on 9/11 were either not involved at all, or were not even close to being adherents of Islam.

The men accused of hijacking the planes were either not involved or were not Muslims

In the weeks after 9/11, many mainstream news sources reported that the accused hijackers were still alive. These claims were reported by major media sources like The Independent, the London Telegraph and the British Broadcasting Corporation. Although BBC attempted to retract the claims later, the Telegraph reported that it had interviewed some of these men, who the newspaper said had the same names, same dates of birth, same places of birth, and same occupations as the accused.[7]

No other media sources have successfully explained the discrepancies around the reports of the alleged hijackers still being alive. One particularly weak attempt, cited as the primary source at Wikipedia, was an absurd hand-waving piece in Der Spiegel that used “U.S. Historian Daniel Pipes” as the authority.[8] Not mentioned is the fact that Pipes, a second-generation neocon and Project for the New American Century signatory, is arguably the world’s leading Islamophobia.[9]

Most importantly, the “hijackers alive” reports were not investigated by the FBI or the 9/11 Commission. In fact, the Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, publicly expressed doubts about the identity of the hijackers. Yet to this day there has been no official response to these contradictions despite their high relevance to the overall investigation.

However, we can imagine that these cases were probably the result of stolen identities and some follow-up media statements suggested just that. With the likelihood of stolen identities, and without an official investigation to clarify, we are left with the conclusion that some of the accused men were not involved. It could be that there may have been other people involved who have never been identified, but without facts to go on we cannot say.

The men who appear to have been falsely accused include the brothers Wail and Waleed al Shehri, and Abdulaziz al Omari.[10] The language in the 911CR suggests that al Omari was the most devout of the accused men, in that he “often served as an imam at his mosque in Saudi Arabia.” But since his identity was stolen and he was therefore not involved, we must look to the other accused men for Muslim connections.

Others who appear to be victims of identity theft include Mohand al Shehri, Salem al Hazmi, Saeed al Ghamdi, and Ahmed al Nami. Although the Commission’s report states that al Ghamdi “attended prayer services regularly,” he was also reported to have trained at the Lackland Air Force Base’s Defense Language Institute, which is a fact that does not support his being a religious fanatic with limitless hostility toward the United States. The report also says of al Hazmi that he was “unconcerned with religion.” In any case, these four must be excluded from the oxymoronic label of “Muslim terrorist” because it appears they were falsely accused.

Another of the accused men who the Commission says was “unconcerned with religion” was Satam al Suqami. This description appears to be correct because, according to The Boston Globe, al Saqami liked to sleep with prostitutes, which is a decidedly non-Muslim activity.[11] In Islam, prostitution and other forms of sexual deviancy are forbidden. Therefore, although al Suqami was not reported to be still alive, he was not a Muslim.

In the months and days leading up to 9/11, the alleged hijackers were reported to have drank alcohol heavily in bars, purchased pornographic materials, watched strippers, and paid for lap dances. Needless to say, people who follow the teachings of the Qu’ran (Muslims) do not do any of those things.

As Temple University professor of Islamic Studies, Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, said in relation to the alleged 9/11 hijackers – “Islam does not condone killing innocent people in the name of God. Nor can a devout Muslim drink booze or party at a strip club and expect to reach heaven.”[12]

Two of the men were being watched by the CIA for at least twenty months prior to 9/11. These were Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, and they did not follow the Qu’ran either. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, these two were often seen at Cheetah’s, a nude bar in San Diego.

The most glaring examples of non-Muslim behavior, however, were exhibited by the alleged hijacker pilots of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175. According to the 911CR, Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi piloted these airliners and crashed them into the WTC towers. Public knowledge about them indicates that they might have been trained at U.S. military facilities, but it is clear that they did not even try to follow the Qu’ran. Frankly, Phillip Zelikow is more of a Muslim than they were.

For one thing, Atta and al Shehhi were known to dress in gaudy jewelry and clothes. Because of this, people thought they were mafia characters. As author Daniel Hopsicker wrote, they wore “Gold jewelry, expensive watches, and silk shirts” and were “Not exactly a description of Islamic fundamentalists.”[13] Additionally, their activities in Florida, in the years prior to 9/11, were closely aligned with those of gunrunners and drug smugglers, which also indicates that they were anything but Muslims.

Atta’s stripper girlfriend, Amanda Keller, said that Atta and al Shehhi “had massive supplies of cocaine” which they restocked whenever needed at one of the flight schools run by Dutch nationals in Florida. Keller said that during the time she dated him, she saw Atta do cocaine himself on multiple occasions.[14] And, of course, Muslims don’t do cocaine or other illicit drugs.

Witnesses saw Al Shehhi and Atta drunk at a Hollywood, Florida sports bar. On another occasion in Palm Beach, Atta and Alshehhi were seen spending $1,000 on champagne in only 45 minutes. During the latter escapade, Atta was with a tall busty brunette and Alshehhi was with a short blonde woman. Both women were known locally as high-priced escorts.[15]

A stripper in Las Vegas, Nevada recalled that Marwan al Shehhi was “cheap,” because he paid only $20 for a lap dance. In the summer of 2001, Al Shehhi was apparently also seen in a nude bar in Pompado Beach, Florida. Six exotic dancers who worked there testified to seeing him. At the same time, both al Shehhi and Hamza Alghamdi were witnessed purchasing pornographic video and sex toys from a Florida store. The Wall Street Journal reported that Alghamdi watched a porn video in his hotel room, and others witnessed alleged hijacker Majed Moqed visiting a porn shop on several occasions in the months before 9/11.[16]

This same categorically non-Muslim behavior was also true for Ziad jarrah, the alleged hijacker pilot of Flight 93, which was destroyed in a field in Pennsylvania. Seven months before the attacks, it was noticed that Jarrah “frequented” a strip club in Jacksonville, Florida.[17]

The 911CR says that six of the alleged hijackers lived in Paterson, NJ for up to six months. This included Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al Hazmi, Khalid al Mihdhar, the man mis-identified as Abdulaziz al Omari, and others. Reports put Ziad Jarrah in Paterson as well. The mayor of Paterson, Marty Barnes, certainly noticed them and he made the point of how non-Muslim they were, saying –“Nobody ever saw them at mosques, but they liked the go-go clubs.” [18]

Given that Atta and friends were so far from being Muslims, it actually makes sense that the U.S. government would try, in the days after 9/11, to bolster the political story by adding actual Muslims to their quickly drawn-up list. The real al Omari, for example, was obviously not involved. But the discrepancy between his being an imam and a go-go club aficionado who never went to the mosques would quickly be lost in the post-9/11 clamor for revenge. And the public’s most banal and prejudiced tendencies could be better exploited with hints of Muslim connections, no matter how weak, just as they have been with the anthrax attacks and the ongoing FBI-planned terrorism.

In any case because the alleged hijacker pilots were clearly not Muslims, the deaths caused by the destruction of those planes cannot be attributed to Muslims. This includes the deaths of the airplane passengers and the people in the impact zones of the WTC.

The alleged hijackers were not responsible for most of the deaths on 9/11, if any

The 911CR says that Hani Hanjour, the accused hijacker pilot of United Airlines Flight 175, was the terrorist operation’s most experienced pilot. The official account tells us that he slammed the aircraft into the Pentagon at the first-floor level going over 500 mph. But all the evidence indicates that he was a very poor pilot at best. He repeatedly failed his training courses on single engine aircraft and according to representatives of his flight training schools he had no fundamental pilot skills.[19] Due to these facts, we know that Hanjour could not have flown the plane as alleged. So it doesn’t matter if he was a Muslim.

It is possible that all the planes were commandeered by way of existing remote control technology, which would explain a number of the unanswered questions.[20] Remote piloting could explain why the planes did not squawk the hijack code, why the auto-pilot stayed on during the hijacking process, and how these planes were flown with extreme precision at very high speeds regardless of the poor skills of the alleged pilots. It would also explain how those who planned the attacks could have remained confident of their success, despite having employed unreliable, cocaine-snorting, alcoholic perverts as “hijackers.”

Regardless of who actually flew the planes, we know that most of the deaths on 9/11 were the result of actions which could not have been accomplished by the accused men. Of course, the initial hijackings could be blamed on the alleged, non-Muslim hijackers and one might argue that some passengers and crew members were said to be killed during the hijackings. But so little is known about how the hijackings occurred that it is difficult to know what really happened. The 9/11 Commission could not even say how the alleged hijackers entered the cockpits of any of the four planes, or why the hijack code was not squawked for any of them.

If we examine what was needed to facilitate the attacks, we see that most of the deaths on 9/11 were the result of many things that should not have happened. And none of it could have been accomplished without the involvement of U.S. authorities.

Pre-9/11 investigations that would have caught the accused men were shut down.

Three WTC skyscrapers were completely destroyed, and all of them fell through what should have been the path of most resistance.[22]

Evidence for explosives at the Pentagon was discovered and not explained.

The debris damage in Pennsylvania indicates that Flight 93 was shot down.

An extensive examination of the people who had access to the WTC towers shows that the accused men were not among those who could have placed explosives in those highly-secure buildings, nor were any Muslims in such a position.[23] Therefore, there is no evidence whatsoever that the accused non-Muslims, or any unspecified Muslims, caused the deaths of the nearly 2,600 people who were killed in the destruction of the Twin Towers.

It is reasonable to say, without an extensive inquiry, that Muslims could not have shut down the pre-9/11 investigations. Similarly, they could not have caused the repeated failure of a hijacking prevention system that had been successful for over 20 years. Muslims certainly could not have stopped U.S. leaders from doing their jobs on 9/11, nor could they have disabled the U.S. air defenses or shot down Flight 93.

Additionally, there is no doubt that Muslims were not to blame for delaying and obstructing the investigation into 9/11, during which time the U.S. and its allies had already initiated massacres in the Middle East. The official accounts that were finally generated, that ignored most of the important evidence and are transparently false, are not the work of Muslims either. The murder of millions of people has been falsely justified by way of those official accounts.

Muslims could not have done any of these things. Not even the drug-abusing drunk called Mohammed Atta, who dated strippers, dressed like a gangster and hung out with drug runners, could have done those things.

Moving beyond Islamophobia

We do have clues about who might have been involved though. For example, Florida Governor Jeb Bush showed up at Rudi Dekkers’ flight school in Venice, Florida where Atta and several of the other accused men had trained, within 24-hours after the attacks, to confiscate all the school’s records.[24] Curiously, Jeb and his brother, the President of the United States, had three relatives working for companies within the impact zones of the WTC towers (Craig Stapleton, Jim Pierce, and Prescott Bush Jr).[25]

Dekkers was a pervert just like the accused, non-Muslim men and he was brought up on charges for sexual harassment. Another of the many weird facts about Dekkers was that he claimed to be a New York City cop, and had a plaque on his wall with words to that effect.[26] This might remind us that Bernard Kerik, the “9/11 hero” who led the New York City Police department when it was credited with providing some of the dubious evidence against the accused, not only dressed like a gangster, he was known to have associated with mafia characters. Coincidentally, the same things were said about FBI agent and lead al Qaeda investigator, John O’Neill.

Kerik spent years working in Saudi Arabia, first for the Saudi royal family and then for one of the companies that later was located near the impact zone in the south tower. Interestingly, Kerik was the first person to tell us that explosives were not involved in the destruction of the WTC. Unfortunately, we can’t get follow-up comments from him because he’s now in prison.

There remain many avenues for further investigation into the accused hijackers and who they really were. Could there be a connection between the porn shops and strip clubs that the accused men liked to visit, and covert activities or organized crime? Could those connections lead from places like Las Vegas and Florida to New York City, and shed light on why so many mafia-linked companies were hired to clean-up the WTC site?

Could the links between Atta, Dekkers’ financier have anything to do with creating a pretext for war in Afghanistan, the country that now leads the world in opium production? That certainly would make sense given that the southwest Florida area near Venice, where Dekkers, Atta and the alleged hijackers spent so much time, was home to a long history of CIA and drug trafficking operations.

Two long-time law enforcement officers interviewed by Daniel Hopsicker said they had “witnessed a 40-year long history of CIA-connected covert operations in their area.” They were describing Atta’s home port in early 2001, the Charlotte County Airport. They added that “they believed that the CIA was somehow involved, if not responsible for, the World Trade Center attacks.”[27]

Forty years is not quite right, however, as the history of covert drug operations in that area went back at least 60 years. The tiny Venice Airport, where most of the alleged hijackers trained, originated as the Venice Army Airfield and was the home of the operatives who worked for General Claire Chennault.[28] Civil Air Transport, the successor to Chennault’s Flying Tigers and the world’s largest heroin-trafficking operation at the time, transported the drugs that funded the early covert operations of the CIA, and those airmen worked closely with organized crime while doing so.[29]

For the 12 years prior to 9/11, drug trafficking and terrorist training in the Venice, Florida area was overlooked by the region’s congressional representative, former CIA operative Porter Goss, and its Senator, Bob Graham. It might not be surprising then, to notice that Goss and Graham led the first official inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t find much.

Unfortunately, these leads are not being investigated due to continued support for the false claim that the alleged hijackers were adherents of Islam. Such support for the official conspiracy theory also promotes the ongoing Muslim genocide. We don’t know where all this falsehood will lead in the future, but people who seek the truth about 9/11 should move beyond blaming Muslims and get back to useful investigative work.

“Time and again, America faces crises that test our readiness and challenge our resolve — from natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods to shootings, cyber incidents, and even acts of terrorism. While my Administration is working tirelessly to avert national tragedies, it is every American‘s responsibility to be prepared. By planning for emergencies, individuals can protect themselves and their families while also contributing to their communities’ resilience. During national preparedness, we refocus our efforts on readying ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods, and our Nation for any crisis we may face. My Administration is committed to preparing our country for the full range of threats. In the face of an emergency, we will continue to cut through red tape and bolster coordination.”

The Importance of Being Self-Sufficient

After an emergency happens resources can be strained quickly and you may have to do without electricity, water service, telephone service, and access to a grocery store just to name a few. That’s why it’s so important for everyone to have the ability to be self-sufficient after an emergency occurs.

“One of the best ways people can help their community and first responders is to be self-sufficient after a disaster;” said Regional Administrator MaryAnn Tierney, “by being self-sufficient, people can take a lot of pressure and strain off of vital resources. Additionally, resources may not be able to reach you for a variety of reasons so you should be prepared by having important items already on hand.”

One of the easiest ways to be self-sufficient is to build an emergency supply kit. These kits or “bug-out” bags, are simply a collection of basic items your household may need in the event of an emergency. You should assemble your kit well in advance of an emergency because you may not have time to search for the supplies you need or shop for them. Keeping your kit organized in some sort of container also ensures that if you have to evacuate you can quickly take your kit with you.

There are a number of basic items that should go into your kit that you probably already have around the house, like water, food, a flashlight, a first aid kit, a can opener, and a radio. There are other items that you may not have thought of or may not have at home, like dust masks, moist towelettes, garbage bags, or a sleeping bag.

Don’t forget to take into account the needs of everyone, that thinking of things like diapers, formula, medications, contact lenses and supplies, special food, or coloring books or activities for kids.

While building your emergency supply kit can seem like a daunting task, it doesn’t have to be. When you go out to the store, see what’s on sale that you need and pick up a few things at a time, that way you don’t break the bank. Another tip is rather than buying bottled water; you can disinfect empty 2-liter bottles and fill them with water. Can’t think of what you want for a birthday or holiday; why not suggest people buy you preparedness supplies, that way you get something you’ll actually use.

BUILD A KIT

A disaster supplies kit is simply a collection of basic items your household may need in the event of an emergency.

Try to assemble your kit well in advance of an emergency. You may have to evacuate at a moment’s notice and take essentials with you. You will probably not have time to search for the supplies you need or shop for them.

You may need to survive on your own after an emergency. This means having your own food, water and other supplies in sufficient quantity to last for at least 72 hours. Local officials and relief workers will be on the scene after a disaster but they cannot reach everyone immediately. You could get help in hours or it might take days.

Additionally, basic services such as electricity, gas, water, sewage treatment and telephones may be cut off for days or even a week, or longer. Your supplies kit should contain items to help you manage during these outages.

Following a disaster, there may be power outages that could last for several days. Stock canned foods, dry mixes and other staples that do not require refrigeration, cooking, water or special preparation. Be sure to include a manual can opener and eating utensils.

The following items are suggested when selecting emergency food supplies. You may already have many of these on hand.

Ready-to-eat canned meats, fruits, vegetables and a can opener

Protein or fruit bars

Dry cereal or granola

Peanut butter

Dried fruit

Nuts

Crackers

Canned juices

Non-perishable pasteurized milk

High energy foods

Vitamins

Food for infants

Comfort/stress foods

Food Safety and Sanitation

Flood, fire, national disaster or the loss of power from high winds, snow or ice could jeopardize the safety of your food. Knowing what to do before and after an emergency can help you reduce your risk of illness and minimize the amount of food that may be lost due to spoilage.

Power outages can occur at any time of the year and it may take from a few hours to several days for electricity to be restored to residential areas. Without electricity or a cold source, food stored in refrigerators and freezers can become unsafe. Bacteria in food grow rapidly at temperatures between 40 and 140 °F, and if these foods are consumed, people can become very sick.

Keep your hands clean by washing them frequently with soap and water that has been boiled or disinfected.

Discard any food that has come into contact with contaminated floodwater.

Discard any food that has been at room temperature for two hours or more.

Discard any food that has an unusual odor, color or texture.

Use ready-to-feed formula, if possible, for formula-fed infants. If using ready-to-feed formula is not possible, it is best to use bottled water to prepare powdered or concentrated formula. If bottled water is not available, use boiled water. Use treated water to prepare formula only if you do not have bottled or boiled water. Breastfed infants should continue breastfeeding.

Don’t:

Eat foods from cans that are swollen, dented or corroded, even though the product may look safe to eat.

Eat any food that looks or smells abnormal, even if the can looks normal.

Let garbage accumulate inside, both for fire and sanitation reasons.

Note: Thawed food usually can be eaten if it is still “refrigerator cold.” It can be re-frozen if it still contains ice crystals. To be safe, remember, “When in doubt, throw it out.”

Cooking

Alternative cooking sources in times of emergency including candle warmers, chafing dishes, fondue pots or a fireplace.

Charcoal grills and camp stoves are for outdoor use only.

Solar ovens are also a great way to cook food.

Commercially canned food may be eaten out of the can without warming.

To heat food in a can:

Remove the label.

Thoroughly wash and disinfect the can. (Use a diluted solution of one part bleach to ten parts water.)

Open the can before heating.

Purifying Water During an Emergency

The treatments described below work only to remove bacteria or viruses from water. If you suspect the water is unsafe because of chemicals, oils, poisonous substances, sewage or other contaminants, do not drink the water. Don’t drink water that is dark colored, has an odor or contains solid materials.

Storing water safely

The best source of drinking water during an emergency is water you have stored with your emergency supplies.

Store one gallon of water per person per day–enough for at least three days.

Store-bought, factory-sealed bottled water is best. Check for an expiration date and replace as needed.

If you choose to fill your own water containers:

Collect the water from a safe supply.

Store water in thoroughly washed plastic containers such as soft drink bottles. You can also purchase food-grade plastic buckets or drums.

Seal water containers tightly, label with date, and store in a cool, dark place.

Replace water every six months.

Never reuse a container that held toxic substances such as pesticides, chemicals or oil.

Purifying by boiling

If your tap water is unsafe, boiling is the best method to kill disease-causing organisms.

If tap water is unavailable, the following may be considered as potential water sources. Water taken from these sources should be boiled before drinking.

Rainwater

Lakes

Rivers and streams

Natural springs

Ponds

Caution: Many chemical pollutants will not be removed by boiling.

Cloudy water should be filtered before boiling. Filter cloudy water using coffee filters, paper towels, cheesecloth or a cotton plug in a funnel.

Bring the water to a rolling boil for at least one full minute.

Let the water cool before drinking.

Add two drops of household bleach per gallon to maintain water quality while in storage.

Purifying by adding liquid chlorine bleach

Treat water by adding liquid household bleach, such as Clorox or Purex.

Caution: Bleach will not kill some disease-causing organisms commonly found in surface water. Bleach will not remove chemical pollutants. Be sure to keep a well marked, sealed dropper bottle of bleach in your bug-out bag as well.

also try:

A good backup to a filter if you ran across a really silty water source. It’s a bit expensive ($15 for six packets, $12 at WalMart), and the packets treat something like 2.5 gallons at a time (which seems like way too much for a backpacker – who’d want to carry that much water?), but I thought it might come in handy in an emergency. and –

Family Supply List

Emergency Supplies:
Water, food, and clean air are important things to have if an emergency happens. Each family or individual’s kit should be customized to meet specific needs, such as medications and infant formula. It should also be customized to include important family documents.

Recommended Supplies to Include in a Basic Kit:
– Water, one gallon of water per person per day, for drinking and sanitation
– Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food
– Battery-powered radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert, and extra batteries for both
– Flashlight and extra batteries
– First Aid kit
– Whistle to signal for help
– Infant formula and diapers, if you have an infant
– Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties for personal sanitation
– Dust mask or cotton t-shirt, to help filter the air
– Plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
– Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
– Can opener for food (if kit contains canned food)

Clothing and Bedding:
If you live in a cold weather climate, you must think about warmth. It is possible that the power will be out and you will not have heat. Rethink your clothing and bedding supplies to account for growing children and other family changes. One complete change of warm clothing and shoes per person, including:
– A jacket or coat
– Long pants
– A long sleeve shirt
– Sturdy shoes
– A hat and gloves
– A sleeping bag or warm blanket for each person

Below are some other items for your family to consider adding to its supply kit. Some of these items, especially those marked with a * can be dangerous, so please have an adult collect these supplies.
– Rain gear
– Mess kits, paper cups, plates and plastic utensils
– Cash or traveler’s checks, change
– Paper towels
– Fire Extinguisher
– Tent
– Compass
– Matches in a waterproof container*
– Signal flare*
– Paper, pencil
– Personal hygiene items including feminine supplies
– Disinfectant*
– Household chlorine bleach* – You can use bleach as a disinfectant (diluted nine parts water to one part bleach), or in an emergency you can also use it to treat water. Use 16 drops of regular household liquid bleach per gallon of water. Do not use scented, color safe or bleaches with added cleaners.
– Medicine dropper
– Important Family Documents such as copies of insurance policies, identification and bank account records in a waterproof, portable container

Make a Plan and Practice, Practice, Practice!

Your family may not be together when a disaster strikes so it is important to plan in advance: how you will get to a safe place; how you will contact one another; how you will get back together; and what you will do in different situations. Read more about Family Communicationduring an emergency.

Ready.gov has made it simple for you to make a family emergency plan. Download the Family Emergency Plan (FEP) and fill out the sections before printing it or emailing it to your family and friends.

You should also inquire about emergency plans at places where your family spends time: work, daycare and school, faith organizations, sports events and commuting. If no plans exist, consider volunteering to help create one. Talk to community leaders, your colleagues, neighbors and members of faith or civic organizations about how you can work together in the event of an emergency. You will be better prepared to safely reunite your family and loved ones during an emergency if you think ahead and communicate with others in advance. Read more about school and workplace plans.

Caring for Animals

If you are like millions of animal owners nationwide, your pet is an important member of your household. Unfortunately, animals are also affected by disaster.

The likelihood that you and your animals will survive an emergency such as a fire or flood, tornado or terrorist attack depends largely on emergency planning done today. Some of the things you can do to prepare for the unexpected, such as assembling an animal emergency supply kit and developing a pet care buddy system, are the same for any emergency. Whether you decide to stay put in an emergency or evacuate to a safer location, you will need to make plans in advance for your pets. Keep in mind that what’s best for you is typically what’s best for your animals.

If you evacuate your home, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR PETS BEHIND! Pets most likely cannot survive on their own and if by some remote chance they do, you may not be able to find them when you return.

If you are going to a public shelter, it is important to understand that animals may not be allowed inside. Plan in advance for shelter alternatives that will work for both you and your pets; consider loved ones or friends outside of your immediate area who would be willing to host you and your pets in an emergency.

Make a back-up emergency plan in case you can’t care for your animals yourself. Develop a buddy system with neighbors, friends and relatives to make sure that someone is available to care for or evacuate your pets if you are unable to do so. Be prepared to improvise and use what you have on hand to make it on your own for at least three days, maybe longer.

Ready.gov has made it simple for you to make a family emergency plan. Download the Family Emergency Plan (FEP) (PDF – 450 Kb) and fill out the sections before printing it or emailing it to your family and friends.

There are many tips and tools to help you become self-sufficient after an emergency, go to ready.gov to learn more.

The President has constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations.

The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11.

War Powers Resolutionrequires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30 day withdrawal period, without an authorization of the use of military force or a declaration of war. The resolution was passed by two-thirds of Congress, overriding a presidential veto. The War Powers Resolution has been violated in the past by President Reaganin regards to the aid to theContras in Nicaragua and by President Clinton in 1999, during the bombing campaign in Kosovo. All incidents have had congressional disapproval, but none have had any successful legal actions taken against the president for violations. All presidents since 1973 have declared their belief that the act is unconstitutional.

Under the United States Constitution, war powers are divided. Congress has the power to declare war, raise and support the armed forces, control the war funding (Article I, Section 8), and has “Power … to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution … all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof”, while the President is commander-in-chief of the military, “when called into the actual Service of the United States” (Article II, Section 2). It is generally agreed that the commander-in-chief role gives the President power to repel attacks against the United States and makes the President responsible for leading the armed forces. In addition and as with all acts of the Congress, the President has the right to sign or veto congressional acts, such as a declaration of war.

S.J.Res. 23 (107th):

A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.

9/14/2001. Authorizes the President to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.

States that this Act is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of the War Powers Resolution.

But the fact that a lot of people think a law is unconstitutional does not necessarily make it unconstitutional. (Right now, many people think Obamacare is unconstitutional (I most certainly do!), but five Supreme Court justices ruled otherwise.) If it is indeed unconstitutional, it would be good to get the Supreme Court to sort this out tout de suite. Because if it isn’t, it has been violated fairly regularly, and we will see it violated again soon.

The War Powers Act doesn’t allow a president to use force absent authorization from Congress unless there is a “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or “possessions” (treasures, i.e. resources), or its armed forces” — a threshold Syria simply does not meet. If Assad’s forces shoot at our ships offshore, Obama can rain hell down upon him, but absent that “national emergency,” he has to go to Congress — as President Bush did for Afghanistan and Iraq.

We have some members of Congress insisting that the law is the opposite of what it is. Representative Pete King (R., N.Y.) told BuzzFeed, “We should not be talking about or insisting on congressional approval.”King added, “If he wants to get approval from Congress, he can, but he does not have to.”

So how does the United nations fit in? After all, that is one of the cornerstones of their “Purposes and Principles.”

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

In a letter to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and President of the Security Council Maria Cristina Perceval, Syrian U.N. envoy Ambassador Bashar Ja‘afaricalled on “the U.N. Secretary General to shoulder his responsibilities for preventing any aggression on Syria and pushing forward reaching a political solution to the crisis in Syria”

He called on the Security Council to “maintain its role as a safety valve to prevent the absurd use of force out of the frame of international legitimacy.”

Ja’afari said Kerry had “adopted old stories fabricated by terrorists” based on fake photos from the internet.

US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel have conspired to destroy Syria by way of arming sectarian extremists since 2007.

The West now admits it, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have provided thousands of tons of weapons to militants in Syria – while also conceding that Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra is the best armed, most well equipped militant front in the conflict.

US, Saudi, Israeli-backed terrorists are now committing a myriad of horrific atrocities against all of Syria’s population, including Sunni Muslims – meaning neither “democracy” nor even “sectarianism” drives the conflict, but rather the destruction of Syria in its entirety.

US State Department acknowledges Syria faces threat from Al Qaeda, demands blockade of arms/aid from reaching government to fight terrorists the US State Department admits are present in every major Syrian city.

Since 2007, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel have been documented as conspiring to overthrow the Syrian government by way of sectarian extremists, including groups “sympathetic to Al Qaeda,” and in particular, the militant, sectarian Muslim Brotherhood. While the West has attempted to portray the full-scale conflict beginning in Syria in 2011 as first, a “pro-democracy uprising,” to now a “sectarian conflict,” recent atrocities carried out by US-Saudi-Israeli proxies have shifted the assault to include Sunni Muslims unable or unwilling to participate in the destruction of the Syrian state.

Such attacks included a mortar bombardment of Damascus University, killing 15 and injuring dozens more, as well as the brutal slaying of two prominent Sunni Muslim clerics – the latest of which was beheaded, his body paraded through the streets of Aleppo, and his head hung from the mosque he preached in. While the West attempts to mitigate these events by labeling the victims as “pro-government,” the reality is that the forces fighting inside Syria are funded, armed, directed, and politically supported from abroad – and therefore do not represent any of the Syrian people’s interests, including those Syrians who do not support the government.

It is abundantly clear that the West’s goal is neither to institute “democracy,” nor even take sides in a “sectarian conflict,” but rather carry out the complete and permanent destruction of Syria as a nation-state, sparing no one, not even Sunnis.

Such a proxy war exists contra to any conceivable interpretation of “international law.” The world is left with a moral imperative to not only denounce this insidious conflict brought upon the Syrian people, compounded and perpetuated entirely by external interests, but demands that concrete action is taken to ensure that this act of aggression is brought to an end.

The US, UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have admitted to colluding together, flooding Syria with thousands of tons of weapons via Jordan to Syria’s south, and NATO-member Turkey to Syria’s north. And in an otherwise inexplicable conundrum, while the likes of US Secretary of State John Kerry insist this torrent of weapons is being directed to “moderates,” neither the US nor its allies are able to explain why Al Qaeda terror front Jabhat al-Nusra has emerged as the most heavily armed, best equipped militant organization in the conflict.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on the sidelines of a Syrian opposition meeting in Italy last month that the weapons are ending up in the hands of secular groups. “I will tell you this: There is a very clear ability now in the Syrian opposition to make certain that what goes to the moderate, legitimate opposition is in fact getting to them, and the indication is that they are increasing their pressure as a result of that,” he said, without elaborating.

But even AP admits that:

Syrian opposition activists estimate there are 15-20 different brigades fighting in and around Damascus now, each with up to 150 fighters. Many of them have Islamic tendencies and bear black-and-white Islamic flags or al-Qaeda-style flags on their Facebook pages. There is also a presence of Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the strongest Islamic terrorist groups fighting alongside the rebels.

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr.

According to the US State Department, al-Nusra is carrying out hundreds of attacks with a wide array of weaponry, across the entire nation of Syria, indicating a massive front and implying an equally massive network of logistical support, including foreign sponsorship. What’s more, is that the US State Department acknowledges al-Nusra’s presence even in cities close to Syria’s borders where the CIA is admittedly overseeing the distribution of weapons and cash. The New York Times, in their June 2012 article, “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition,” reported that:

A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The article would also state:

Although rebel commanders and the data indicate that Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been shipping military materials via Turkey to the opposition since early and late 2012, respectively, a major hurdle was removed late last fall after the Turkish government agreed to allow the pace of air shipments to accelerate, officials said.

Simultaneously, arms and equipment were being purchased by Saudi Arabia in Croatia and flown to Jordan on Jordanian cargo planes for rebels working in southern Syria and for retransfer to Turkey for rebels groups operating from there, several officials said.

The US State Department acknowledges that the well armed, prominent terror front al-Nusra is operating in the very areas the CIA is feeding weapons and cash into.

West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s 2007 report, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq” indicated which areas in Syria Al Qaeda fighters filtering into Iraq came from. The overwhelming majority of them came from Dayr Al-Zawr in Syria’s southeast, Idlib in the north near the Turkish-Syrian border, and Dar’a in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border. (Right) A map indicating the epicenters of violence in Syria indicate that the exact same hotbeds for Al Qaeda in 2007, now serve as the epicenters of so-called “pro-democracy fighters” and also happen to be areas the US CIA is admittedly distributing weapons and other aid in.

Such a reality directly contradicts the US State Department’s official position, and no explanation is given as to how “moderates” can be provided with such extensive support, and still be eclipsed militarily and logistically by terror-front al-Nusra. That is, unless of course, the US, British, Saudi, and Qatari weapons aren’t simply just handing the weapons directly to terrorists, precisely as planned as early as 2007.

The Destruction of Syria Began in 2007, Not 2011

While the West has attempted to reclaim Syria as part of its sphere of influence for decades, concrete plans for the latest proxy war were laid at least as early as 2007. It was admitted in 2007 that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel conspired together to fund, arm, and direct sectarian extremists including militants “sympathetic” to Al Qaeda, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, against the governments of Iran and Syria. In Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s 2007 New Yorker article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” the conspiracy was described as follows:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Hersh also cited US, Saudi, and Lebanese officials who indicated that, “in the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic direction,” and that, “the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The report would also state:

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

Mention of the Muslim Brotherhood already receiving aid even in 2007 was also made:

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition.”

There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.

The Wall Street Journal in 2007 would also implicate the Muslim Brotherhood and more specifically, the so-called “National Salvation Front,” in its article, “To Check Syria, U.S. Explores Bond With Muslim Brothers.” It appears then that the so-called “opposition” is a creation and perpetuation of the West and its ambitions, not the aspirations of the “Syrian people.”

It is clear that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel planned to use sectarian extremists against the nation of Syria starting at least as early as 2007, and it is clear that now these sectarian extremists are carrying out the destruction of Syria with a massive torrent of weapons and cash provided by the US and its regional allies, just as was described by Hersh’s report.

A Moral Imperative to Save Syria

Syria is under attack by an insidious, premeditated foreign assault, intentionally using terrorist proxies in direct and complete violation of any conceivable interpretation of both national and international law. The world has a moral imperative to support the Syrian people and their government as they fight this assault – both politically and logistically. While US Secretary John Kerry is unable to account for how his nation’s support for moderates has left Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra front the premier militant faction in Syria, he has demanded that Iraq help stem the flow of alleged aid Iran is providing the Syrian government as it fights these terrorists.

Does US Secretary of State John Kerry deny that Syria is fighting a significant (and continuously growing) Al Qaeda presence within their borders, which according to the US State Department’s own statement, is operating in every major city in the country? What conceivable explanation or excuse could be made to justify the blockading of aid sent to Syria to fight Al Qaeda terrorists? In fact, why isn’t the US aiding the Syrian government itself in its fight against Al Qaeda – a terrorist organization the US has used as an excuse to wage unending global war since 2001 when Al Qaeda allegedly killed some 3,000 American civilians?

Does Secretary Kerry believe that further arming “moderates” is a legitimate strategy to counter Al Qaeda’s growing presence in Syria when these “moderates” openly defend Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra? The US’ own hand-picked “Syrian opposition leader,” Mouaz al Khatib, demanded the US reconsider its designation of al Nusra as a terrorist organization. Retuers reported in their article, “Syrian opposition urges U.S. review of al-Nusra blacklisting,” that:

The leader of Syria’s opposition coalition urged the United States on Wednesday to review its decision to designate the militant Islamist Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist group, saying religion was a legitimate motive for Syrian rebels.

“The decision to consider a party that is fighting the regime as a terrorist party needs to be reviewed,” Mouaz Alkhatib told a “Friends of Syria” meeting in Morocco, where Western and Arab states granted full recognition to the coalition seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

The US is directly responsible for the emergence and perpetuation of Al Qaeda and other extremist groups in Syria. The statements of Secretary John Kerry are made merely to maintain an increasingly tenuous “plausible deniability.” The precedent being set by the US and its allies is one of using full-scale proxy invasions, that if successful in Syria, will be directed into Iran, up through the Caucasus Mountains in Russia, and even onto China’s doorstep via extremists the West is cultivating amongst the Uighurs. It is also clear that the West is directly responsible for the extremists within their own borders, and that these extremists are being used as a political tool against the people of the West, just as they are being used as a mercenary force abroad.

A united front between nations against this wanton state sponsorship of terrorism is needed – with nations pledging political and logistical support to the Syrian people to defeat this open conspiracy. Individually, we can identify, boycott, and permanently replacethe corporate-financier interests who conceived of and are driving this agenda. Failure to stop such wide scale criminality against the Syrian people now, will only invite greater criminality against us all in the near future.

But the fact that a lot of people think a law is unconstitutional does not necessarily make it unconstitutional. (Right now, many people think Obamacare is unconstitutional, but five Supreme Court justices ruled otherwise.) If it is indeed unconstitutional, it would be good to get the Supreme Court to sort this out tout de suite. Because if it isn’t, it has been violated fairly regularly, and we may see it violated again soon.

The War Powers Act doesn’t allow a president to use force absent authorization from Congress unless there is a “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces” — a threshold Syria simply does not meet. If Assad’s forces shoot at our ships offshore, Obama can rain hell down upon him, but absent that “national emergency,” he suppose to go to Congress. But will he?

A picture released by the US Navy shows an F/A-18C Hornet assigned to the Rampagers of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 83 preparing to launch from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) on June 17, 2013 in the Mediterranean Sea. (AFP Photo/US Navy)

As the United States, along with its European and “Israeli allies,” prepares to launch yet another illegal war of aggression in the Middle East, the geopolitics of the US strategy could not be more apparent.

Despite the high-minded talk of “humanitarianism,” the US is advancing a transparently neo–colonialist agenda aimed at securing hegemony in the region by destroying what little opposition remains.

Lights…camera…war!

The images and videos flooding the internet since last week purport to show ‘evidence’ of a chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the Assad regime. This development neatly and conveniently coincides with the declaration by the Obama administration that the use of such weapons constitutes a ‘red line’, merely a euphemism for the point at which the US would feel emboldened to militarily intervene on behalf of the rebels.

And so, as news outlets report on the ‘likely use of chemical weapons’ by Damascus without anything other than unverifiable hearsay and ambiguous video footage, the drumbeat of war gets louder and louder.

A clear-thinking and rational political analyst would immediately be suspicious about the attack considering the presence of international chemical weapons investigators in Syria, as well as the fact that Damascus was undeniably winning the war against the jihadi rebel factions in cities like Qussair, Homs, Aleppo and elsewhere. That Assad would sabotage his own military victories and provide the perfect pretext for a foreign intervention is not only far-fetched, it runs contrary to his own record throughout this conflict. Remember that Damascus has shown restraint in the face of international war crimes committed against it by Israel, Turkey and other regional actors who have been fomenting the conflict in Syria for more than two years.

An image grab taken from a video shows an opposition fighter firing an rocket propelled grenade (RPG) on August 26, 2013 during clashes with regime forces over the strategic area of Khanasser, situated on the only road linking Aleppo to central Syria. (AFP Photo)

And so we see once again that we are living in what French philosopher and cultural critic Guy Debord called ‘The Society of the Spectacle’– a world in which representation of truth is more important than truth itself, where videos of unknown origin and without verification take the place of authentic evidence and investigation, where wars that will destroy millions of lives and future generations are manufactured by paid actors on television who merely masquerade as journalists.

All this leads many to wonder whether the United States is really as stupid as it seems. Could Washington actually believe that a war in Syria will actually benefit the US and its interests? Could they truly be so short-sighted and unwilling to learn from past mistakes? Although these questions would seem entirely valid, they presuppose that a war with Syria is actually the goal of a war with Syria. On the contrary, this illegal aggression against the sovereign Syrian Arab Republic is merely the opening phase of a greater regional war with the ultimate target being the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Smashing the Shiite crescent

In the decades since the revolution of 1979 which created the modern Islamic Republic of Iran, the US policy toward that country has been antagonistic and belligerent to such a degree that Iran has been forced, out of sheer necessity, to rely very heavily on its few regional and international allies. And so, given the political posture of Bashar Assad, like that of his father before him, Damascus has been viewed as Iran’s key political partner, providing Iran with a crucial ally along the border with Israel and a bridge to the Hezbollah organization in Southern Lebanon. Additionally, a multi-ethnic society like Syria with a dominant Shiite, Alawite demographic presents itself as a natural friend to Shiite Iran. However, the importance of this relationship does not stop at mere similarities.

Since the United States imposed draconian sanctions against Tehran, ostensibly over Iran’s alleged nuclear program, the economics of the Iran-Syria relationship have become even more significant. As Tehran has been increasingly frozen out of world energy markets due to US and European sanctions that make it difficult if not impossible to settle international debts with the Islamic Republic, it has been forced to find alternative methods and infrastructure to sell its oil and gas and maintain its fragile economy.

A centerpiece of this strategy is the Iran–Iraq–Syria Pipelinedeal signed last month. Intended to provide Iran with a new delivery route to the Mediterranean coast, giving it renewed access to the Eurasian landmass and markets, the pipeline is obviously a blow to US-Israeli attempts to strangle the regime in Iran economically. Syria, being the critical linchpin in this deal, figures significantly in the Iranian strategy to survive the sanctions, thereby necessitating Iranian involvement in the conflict if only to provide the critical support Assad needs to maintain control of the security of the country.

Syrians walk in a heavily damaged street in Syria’s eastern town of Deir Ezzor on August 26, 2013. (AFP Photo)

When one looks at the players involved in the war in Syria, it becomes clear that the Sunni monarchies – Saudi Arabia and Qatar primarily – have committed to the war in order to ensure their own continued hegemony, especially in terms of energy production. Qatar, being one of the world’s wealthiest gas exporters, views the growing relationship between Iran and Syria, especially the gas pipeline deal, as an existential threat to their own standing. The Saudis, long since mortal enemies and rivals of the Shia Iranians, also have come to view Syria as merely a battleground in the larger proxy war with Iran.

And then of course, there’s Israel. Perched comfortably on Syria’s border, Israel has played a key role in stoking tensions and fomenting unrest on the other side of the Golan Heights. Not only did Israel carry out a number of blatantly illegal bombings inside Syria’s borders, there have been dozens of mainstream accounts, including videos, of Israeli Special forces commandos inside of Syria. Naturally, Israeli intentions are to further their own interests which for decades have been centered on the destruction of Iran, their main regional competitor and rival.

Furthermore, as renowned author and geopolitical analyst F. William Engdahlhas noted, Israel’s new gas discoveries off the Mediterranean coast add a new dimension to the struggle for dominance in the region. Engdahl writes, “Now Israel faces a strategic and very dangerous dilemma. Naturally, Israel is none too excited to see Assad’s Syria, linked to Israel’s arch foe Iran, and Iraq and Lebanon out-compete an Israeli Gas Exports to the EU markets. This could explain why Israel’s Netanyahu government has been messing inside Syria in the anti-Assad forces.”

A picture released by the US Navy shows aircrafts assigned to Carrier Air Wing 7 fly in formation above the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) on June 15, 2013 in the Mediterranean Sea. (AFP Photo/US Navy)

Of course, Israel is not an entirely independent actor. As a principal player in the US-dominated imperial system, Israel serves as the bad cop to Washington’s good cop on Iran. While the warmongers in Tel Aviv call for Iranian blood, the US is able to feign interest in nuclear negotiations to resolve the conflict and lift the sanctions. At the very same moment, the US, EU and Israel instigate civil war in Syria precisely to weaken the Iranians, already isolated politically and economically, thereby showing that not only are they not interested in peace with Iran, they are implementing a multi-phased strategy to destroy that country.

Adding insult to injury, the continued instability and violence in Iraq has politically weakened Prime Minister Maliki, a key Iranian ally. With Baghdad and Damascus in chaos, Tehran will find it very difficult to continue to support Hezbollah, another important piece on the chessboard. So one can see without great difficulty that the war in Syria is, at a fundamental level, a means to an end – the end being the total destruction of the Shia Crescent insofar as it represents resistance to the hegemonic designs of the US, Israel, and their puppet Sunni monarchies.

The enemies have been scheming for a long time … and have accumulated huge and influential material wealth. With their money, they took control of the world media… With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the globe… They stood behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution and most of the revolutions we hear about… With their money, they formed secret organizations – such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions – which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests… They stood behind World War I …and formed the League of Nationsthrough which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains… There is no war going on anywhere without them having their finger in it. [The Covenant of the Hamas -Article 22]

What has become ever more apparent in recent weeks and months is that the conflict in Syria is much larger than Syria itself. Like the Balkans almost exactly 100 years ago, Syria has become the proverbial powder keg in which Western leaders play with matches. Tragically, the diplomatic brinksmanship of the imperial powers in 1914 unleashed upon the world one of the greatest tragedies in the history of humanity: the First World War. As the United States prepares to commence yet another war, let us hope that world war is not once again the outcome.

Was the August 21 chemical attack a false flag event?

As the term is used in contemporary America, a “false flag” incident is some traumatic public event that is:

False: The public are given an untruthful version of the event by the government and the media. The falsity can range from no oneactually had been killed or hurt (it was all theater); to someof the alleged victims are real; to all the alleged victims are real but the alleged perpetrator(s) is a fall guy who was set up by the “real” conspirators behind the scenes.

Results in a “rallying around the flag” effect: Whatever the true nature of the “False flag” event, the objective is to arouse and manipulate the emotions (fear, anger, outrage, indignation) of the American people so that they’ll “rally around the flag” in an outburst of patriotism, supplying the current White House occupant and his (and his party’s) policies with their support and loyalty.

I propose that we approach the question of whether the August 21 Syrian chemical attack was a false flag by asking these questions:

Who has the motive?

Who has the means?

Who has a prior record (precedent) of instigating chemical attacks?

What evidence do we have that the rebels perpetrated the Aug. 21 chemical attack?

What does the Obama regime intend to accomplish with a military “intervention”?

1. Who has the motive?

As discussed above, Syrian government forces have been winning the civil war since June. It makes no sense for the winning side to suddenly up the stakes by resorting to chemical weapons, especially since Obama had declared the use of the same chemical weapons to be the “red line” that will trigger the United States’ intervention. In other words, by resorting to chemical weapons, Assad has everything to lose and nothing to gain. As Stratfor’s George Friedman puts it:

“Al Assad is a ruthless man: He would not hesitate to use chemical weapons if he had to. He is also a very rational man: He would use chemical weapons only if that were his sole option. At the moment, it is difficult to see what desperate situation would have caused him to use chemical weapons and risk the worst.”

In contrast, the jihadist rebels have been losing the civil war. Desperate people resort to desperate measures. Launching a chemical attack and killing their own people but putting the blame on the Syrian government, would bring the condemnation of the world as well as the most powerful military in the world, the United States, against their enemy — the Assad regime.

2. Who has the means?

Both the Syrian regime and the rebels have access to chemical weapons.

According to ABC News, April 23, 2013: “Videos have surfaced online of Islamist rebel fighters with vast supplies of chemicals, carrying out experiments on animals and saying they will use chemical weapons against the Assad regime.

The Assad regime is believed to have one of the biggest stockpiles of chemical weapons in the world which contains the VX nerve agent and mustard gas, in addition to sarin.”

3. Who undertook previous chemical attacks?

Previous chemical attacks in the Syrian civil war had been undertaken by the jihadist rebels:

Sarin attack on March 19, 2013 in Khan al-Asal (near Aleppo): Although Israel, Britain, France and the U.S. blamed Assad, a United Nations investigation found “strong, concrete suspicions” that the rebels were responsible.

A UN report in June 2013 says a UN panel has compiled evidence that chemical weapons were not used by Assad but instead by the Muslim Brotherhood rebels.

4. Where’s the evidence?

A, Whatever evidence we have all point to the jihadist rebels as the perpetrators:

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says the Aug. 21 chemical weapon (“a homemade missile” with “chemical poison gas”) was shot “from the positions” of the rebels and is similar to the March 19 sarin-gas missile used by Syrian rebels. (Source: Voice of Russia)

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich says “there are reports circulating on the Internet, in particular that the materials of the [chemical attack] incident and accusations against government troops had been posted for several hours before the so-called attack.” (Source:Russia Today)

Syrian Arab News Agency claims that the government had intercepted two phone calls of the rebels which show that the rebels are responsible for the chemical attack. The first phone call was between a rebel and “his boss” or financier from Saudi Arabia, in which the rebel boasted that one of his battalion’s achievements was the Aug. 21 attack. The second phone call revealed the cooperation between two rebel groups in bringing two bottles of sarin gas to Damascus.

A video from a Syrian TV news report claims to show chemicals and weapons seized by the Syrian government in the rebel stronghold of Jobar. Note at the :10 mark a label that reads: “Saudi Factory for Chlorine and Alkalies”.

Walid Shoebat’s Shoebat Foundation has several videos uploaded by “Free Syrian” rebels showing them threatening to use chemical weapons, loading a rocket armed with a chemical agent, as well as the voice of a rebel about using sarin gas.

The behavior of the Assad regime is not consistent with their being the guilty party:

Assad has allowed — and is allowing — UN experts to investigate sites of chemical weapon attacks. In contrast, the rebels don’t display a similar cooperative willingness.

B. Evidence of the Obama regime training and arming Syrian rebels:

According to a December 2011 email leaked by Wikileaks (see above), SOF (Special Operations Forces) teams from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey are already on the ground in Syria “focused on recce (reconnaissance) missions and training opposition forces.” The email was from a member of Stratfor who had spent an afternoon at the Pentagon with the USAF strategic studies group. From the email: “They [USAF] don’t believe U.S air intervention would happen unless there was enough media attention on a massacre, like the Ghadafi move against Benghazi. They think the US would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn’t reach that very public stage.”

Even worse, on January 29, 2013, the UK’s Daily Mail published an article on leaked emails proving the White House gave the green light to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that could be blamed on Assad’s regime and in turn, spur international military action against Syria. A week after the Aug. 21 chemical attack, Patriot Action Network discovered that Daily Mail had scrubbed the article. But you can still read the original article on web archive.

Here’s a screenshot of the article as it was published on January 29th, 2013:

5. What does the Obama regime intend to accomplish with a military intervention?

Reportedly, options being considered by the Obama regime include cruise missile strikes, an air campaign, and cross-border shelling, among others.

The day after the chemical attack, on August 22, 2013, Stars and Stripes, an official Defense Department publication, published an AP report saying US officials are divided on how to respond to the chemical attack incident, with “top military leaders” cautioning against even limited action in Syria. Army General Martin E. Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs chairman, said in a letter this week to a congressman that “the US military is clearly capable of taking out Assad’s air force and shifting the balance of the war toward the armed opposition. But such an approach would plunge the US into the war without offering any (end game) strategy.”

In other words, what may begin with air strikes inevitably will lead to the U.S. being stuck in yet another long drawn-out war.

Indeed, I woke up this morning to a reporter on the overnight ABC news saying that U.S. air strikes had never been successful at stopping whatever government from doing anything.

An Aug. 19-23 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 60% of Americans surveyed said the United States should not intervene in Syria’s civil war, while just 9% thought Obama should act. But Obama and Congress are hell bent on war.

Tell your so-called representatives in D.C. that you don’t want another war!!!!!

Zionist agent Barack Obama, deliberate and maniacal supporter of the Zionist entity, is hereby held directly responsible for the poison gas attacks in Syria, as is his entire cabinet.

Barack Obama has ordered US intelligence agencies to urgently establish whether hundreds have died in poison gas attacks in Syria after France said that “force” would be justified if Bashar al-Assad’s regime was responsible.

The USA and Saudi Arabia did the poison gas attacks in Syria. MSM news is lying to the country for the government about it. The international community must expose this crime before a world war goes nuclear.

According to state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), during a battle with rebels yesterday the Syrian army seized a stockpile of chemicals, canisters, weapons and gear located in a warehouse tunnel in Jobar, a suburb of Damascus. In a post on the social networking website Twitter, SANA claims some soldiers involved in the battle were exposed to some kind of chemical agent and in some cases “suffocated,” but the number of those killed, if any, was not reported.

“Army heroes are entering the tunnels of the terrorists and saw chemical agents”, said SANA, as quoted by Al-Alam News Network. “It is believed that the terrorists have used chemical weapons in the area”, quoted by CNN. The Syrian government often labels members of the Free Syrian Army and other rebels as “terrorists.”

SANA says government forces were fighting rebels and pushed into Jobar where they seized the items in a warehouse. In a video by SANA and published by RT News, at least one of those items, a box labeled “Coverall – CW protective,” was made in the United States. Antidotes for chemical agents allegedly from the “The Qatari–German Company for Pharmaceutical Industries” and materials from Saudi Arabia were also among the items seized. Pictures also show grenades, rockets and what appear to be several other unknown chemical agents. Government forces say the stockpile belonged to rebels and opposition forces.

The country’s largest opposition group, The Syrian National Coalition (CNFROS), released a statement denying the use of chemical weapons in both today’s and Wednesday’s battles. They deny even possessing chemical weapons saying the “information disclosed by the regime [is] false” and the accusations attempt “to disguise and conceal his [Assad‘s] repeated and systematic crimes against Syrian civilians.”

The seizure comes just days after government forces were accused of carrying out a large-scale chemical attack in the Ghouta region of Damascus on Wednesday. Reports say anywhere between 100 and 1,300 people were killed in the attack. Prior to today’s incident and after Wednesday’s alleged chemical attack, government forces heavily bombed the area.

The fighting comes as United Nations observers arrived to investigate claims of chemical weapons use elsewhere in the nation. According to one report, government forces have retaken control of Jobar.

BREAKING NEWS: Russia and China step up warning over strike in Syria

Russia and China have stepped up their warnings against military intervention in Syria, with Moscow saying any such action would have “catastrophic consequences” for the region. The US and its allies are considering launching strikes on Syria in response to alleged deadly attacks last week. The US said there was “undeniable” proof of a chemical attack, on Monday. UN chemical weapons inspectors are due to start a second day of investigations in the suburbs of Damascus.

The UN team came under sniper fireas they tried to visit an area west of the city on Monday. A spokesman for UK Prime Minister David Cameron says the UK is making contingency plans for military action in Syria. Mr Cameron has cut short his holiday and returned to London to deal with the Syrian crisis. Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich has called on the international community to show “prudence” over the crisis and observe International law. ”Attempts to bypass theSecurity Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa,” he said in a statement. Late on Monday, the US said it was postponing a meeting on Syria with Russian diplomats, citing “ongoing consultations” about alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria. Hours later, Russia expressed regret about the decision. The two sides had been due to meet in The Hague on Wednesday to discuss setting up an international conference on finding a political solution to the crisis. The Russian deputy defense minister, Gennadiy M. Gatilov said working out the political parameters for a resolution on Syria would be especially useful, with the threat of force hanging over the country. On Monday, Mr Cameron spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin who said there was no evidence yet that Syria had used chemical weapons against rebels, Mr Cameron’s office said.

An attack on Syria would be dangerous and irresponsible, and the world should remember the Iraq war was started by U.S. allegations of weapons of mass destruction which turned out to be false, China’s official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.

The official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, said Western powers were rushing to conclusions about who may have used chemical weapons in Syria before UN inspectors had completed their investigation. Both the Syrian government and rebels have blamed each other for last Wednesday’s attacks.Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieressaid three hospitals it supported in the Damascus area had treated about 3,600 patients with “neurotoxic symptoms”, of whom 355 had died. US officials said there was “little doubt” that President Bashar al-Assad’s government was to blame. UN inspectors spent nearly three hours in the western district of Muadhamiya on Monday where they visited two hospitals and interviewed survivors, eyewitnesses and doctors. A UN spokesman said they had collected some samples. Earlier in the day, the UN convoy came under fire from unidentified snipers and was forced to turn back before resuming its journey.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-mooncondemned the shooting and asked the UN team in Syria to register a complaint. In the most forceful US reaction yet, US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday described the recent attacks in the Damascus area as a “moral obscenity”. He said the delay in allowing UN inspectors to the sites was a sign the Syrian government had something to hide. He said Washington had additional information about the attacks that it would make public in the days ahead. ”What we saw in Syria last week should “shock the conscience of the world.” It defies any code of morality,” Mr Kerry said at a news conference on Monday. ”Make no mistake, President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Washington has recently bolstered its naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean and military leaders from the US, UK and their allies have convened a meeting in Jordan. Analysts believe the most likely US action would be sea-launched cruise missiles targeting Syrian military installations. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on Monday the West had not produced any proof that President Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons. He was responding to suggestions from some Western countries that military action against the Syrian government could be taken without a UN mandate. Mr Lavrov said the use of force without Security Council backing would be “a crude violation of international law”. Earlier, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC an international military response to the suspected use of chemical weapons would be “possible without the backing of the UN.”

The UN Security Council is divided, with Russia and China opposing military intervention and the UK and France warning that the UN could be bypassed if there was “great humanitarian need”.

In a column in The Timesnewspaper, formerUK PM Tony Blairhas written that if the West does not intervene to support “freedom and democracy in Egypt and Syria,” the Middle East will face catastrophe. The UN says more than 100,000 people have “allegedly” been killed since the uprising against President Assad began more than two years ago. The conflict has produced more than 1.7 million registered refugees.

In 1973, CIA Director James Schlesinger told Senate Armed Services Chairman John Stennis that he wished to brief him on a major upcoming operation. “No, no my boy,” responded Senator Stennis. “Don’t tell me. Just go ahead and do it, but I don’t want to know.” Similarly, when Senate Foreign Relations CommitteeChairman J.W. Fulbright was told of the CIA subversion of the Allende government in Chile, he responded, “I don’t approve of intervention in other people’s elections, but it has been a long-continued practice.”

Late in 1974, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh revealed that the CIA was not only destabilizing foreign governments, but was also conducting illegal intelligence operations against thousands of American citizens.

On January 27, 1975, an aroused Senate voted overwhelmingly to establish a special 11-member investigating body along the lines of the recently concluded Watergate Committee. Under the chairmanship of Idaho Senator Frank Church, with Texas Senator John Tower as vice-chairman, the select committee was given nine months and 150 staffers to complete its work.

The so-called Church Committeeran into immediate resistance from the Ford administration, concerned about exposing American intelligence operations and suspicious of Church’s budding presidential ambitions.

The committee interviewed 800 individuals, and conducted 250 executive and 21 public hearings. At the first televised hearing, staged in the Senate Caucus Room, Chairman Church dramatically displayed a CIA poison Heart Attack Gun to highlight the committee’s discovery that the CIA directly violated a presidential order by maintaining stocks of shellfish toxin sufficient to kill thousands.

Lacking focus and necessarily conducting much of its work behind closed doors, the panel soon lost any hope of becoming a second Watergate Committee. Critics, from Bing Crosby to Paul Harvey, accused it of treasonous activity. The December 1975 assassination of a (CIA) Station Chiefin Greece intensified the public backlash against its mission.

The panel issued its two-foot-thick final report in May 1976 without the support of influential Republican members John Tower and Barry Goldwater. Despite its shortcomings, the inquiry demonstrated the need for perpetual surveillance of the intelligence community and resulted in the creation of the permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Historian Henry Steele Commagerassessed the Committee’s legacy. Referring to executive branch officials who seemed to consider themselves above the law, he said, “It is this indifference to constitutional restraints that is perhaps the most threatening of all the evidence that emerges from the findings of the Church Committee.”

Church Committee Reports

These 14 published reports of the Church Committee contain a wealth of information on the formation, operation, and abuses of U.S. intelligence agencies. They were published in 1975 and 1976, after which recommendations for reform were debated in the Congress and in some cases carried out.

The Interim Report documents the Church Committee’s findings on U.S. involvement in attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, particularlyPatrice Lumumbaof the Congo, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, and General Rene Schneider of Chile. It also contains findings on the development of a general “Executive Action” capability by the CIA.

The remaining reports are split into 7 volumes of public hearings and exhibits and 6 books which contain the Committee’s writings on the various topics investigated. These 14 reports are the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made public.

Americans will soon be locked into an unaccountable police state unless US Representatives and Senators find the courage to ask questions and to sanction the executive branch officials who break the law, violate the Constitution, withhold information from Congress, and give false information about their crimes against law, the Constitution, the American people and those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Guantanamo, and elsewhere.

Congress needs to use the impeachment power that the Constitution provides and cease being subservient to the lawless executive branch. The US faces no threat that justifies the lawlessness and abuse of police powers that characterize the executive branch in the 21st century.

Impeachment is what protects the citizens, the Constitution, and the other branches of government from abuse by the executive branch. If the power to remove abusive executive branch officials is not used, the power ceases to exist. An unused power is like a dead letter law. Its authority disappears. By acquiescing to executive branch lawlessness, Congress has allowed the executive branch to place itself above law and to escape accountability for its violations of law and the Constitution.

If an American citizen lies to a federal investigator, even if not under oath, the citizen can be arrested, prosecuted, and sent to prison. Yet, these same federal personnel can lie to Congress and to citizens with impunity. Whatever the American political system is, it has nothing whatsoever to do with accountable government. In Amerika no one is accountable but citizens, who are accountable not only to law but also to unaccountable charges for which no evidence is required.

Congress has the power to impeach any presidential appointee as well as the president. YOU MUST DEMAND IT! or else go back to sleep, you piece of……

In the 1970s Congress was going to impeach President Richard Nixon “simply because he lied about when he learned of the Watergate burglary.” ( which also turned out to be a hoax. See: The Alabama Project) To avoid impeachment, Nixon resigned.

In the 1990s, the House impeached President Bill Clinton for lying about his sexual affair with a White House intern. The Senate failed to convict, no doubt as many had sexual affairs of their own and didn’t want to be held accountable themselves.

In the simply because he lied about when he learned of the Watergate burglary. To avoid impeachment, Nixon resigned.

In the 1990s, the House impeached President Bill Clinton for lying about his sexual affair with a White House intern. The Senate failed to convict, no doubt as many had sexual affairs of their own and didn’t want to be held accountable themselves.

In the 1970s when I was on the Senate staff, corporate lobbyists would send attractive women to seduce Senators so that the interest groups could blackmail the Senators to do their bidding. Don’t be surprised if the NSA has adopted this corporate practice.

The improprieties of Nixon and Clinton were minor, indeed of little consequence, when compared to the crimes of George W. Bush and Obama, their vice presidents, and the bulk of their presidential appointees. Yet, impeachment is “off the table,” as Nancy Pelosi infamously declared. Why do Californian voters send a person to Congress who refuses to protect them from an unaccountable executive branch? Who does Nancy Pelosi serve? Certainly not the people of California. Most certainly not the US Constitution. Pelosi is in total violation of her oath of office. Will Californians re-elect her yet again? Little wonder America is failing.

The question demanding to be asked is: What is the purpose of the domestic surveillance of all Americans? This is surveillance out of all proportion to the alleged terrorist threat. The US Constitution is being ignored and domestic law violated.

Why?

Does the US government have an undeclared agenda for which the “terrorist threat” is a cover?

What is this AGENDA? Whose agenda is more important than the US Constitution and the accountability of government to law? No citizen is secure unless government is accountable to the Constitution and to law. It is an absurd idea that any American is more threatened by terrorism than by unaccountable government that can execute them, torture them, and throw them in prison for life without due process or any accountability whatsoever. Under Bush/Obama, the US has returned to the unaccountable power of caesars, czars, and autocrats.

In the famous play, “A Man for All Seasons,” (I highly recommend) Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, asks: So, you would have me to cut down the law in order to chase after devils? And what will we do, with the law cut down, when the devil turns on us?

This is the most important legal question ever asked, and it is seldom asked today, not in our law schools, not by our bar associations, and most certainly not by the Justice (sic) Department or US Attorneys.

American conservatives regard civil liberties as mere excuses for liberal judges to coddle criminals and terrorists. Never expect a conservative Republican, or more than two or three of them, to defend your civil liberty. Republicans simply do not believe in civil liberty. Democrats cannot conceive that Obama–the first black president in office, a member of an oppressed minority–would not defend civil liberty. This combination of disinterest and denial is why the US has become a police state.

Civil liberty has few friends in government, the political parties, law schools, bar associations, or the federal judiciary. Consequently, no citizen is secure. Recently, a housewife researched online for pressure cookers looking for the best deal. Her husband was searching for a backpack. The result was that a fully armed SWAT team appeared at the door demanding to search the premises and to have questions answered.

I am always amazed when someone says: “I haven’t done anything wrong. I have nothing to fear.” If you have nothing to fear from the government, why did the Founding Fathers put the protections in the Constitution that Bush and Obama have stripped out?

Unlike the Founding Fathers who designed our government to protect the citizens, the American sheeple trust the government to their own demise.

In other words, the use of the surveillance justified by the “war on terror” has already spread into prosecutions of ordinary criminals where it has corrupted legal safeguards and the integrity, if any, of the criminal court system, prosecutors and judges.

This is just one of the many ways in which you have much to fear, whether you think you are doing anything wrong or not. You can be framed for crimes based on inferences drawn from your Internet activity and jokes with friends on social media. Jurors made paranoid by the “terrorist threat” will convict you.

We should be very suspicious of the motive behind the universal spying on US citizens. The authorities are aware that the terrorist threat does not justify the unconstitutional and illegal spying. There have been hardly any real terrorist events in the US, which is why the FBI has to find clueless people around whom to organize an FBI orchestrated plot in order to keep the “terrorist threat” alive in the public’s mind.

At last count, there have been at least 150 “sting operations” in which the FBI recruits people, who are out of touch with reality, to engage in a well-paid FBI designed plot. Once the dupes agree, they are arrested as terrorists and the plot revealed, always with the accompanying statement that the public was never in any danger as the FBI was in control.

When 99 percent of all terrorism is organized by the FBI, why do we need NSA spying on every communication of every American and people in the rest of the world?

Terrorism seldom comes from outside. The source almost always is the government in power. The Czarist secret police set off bombs in order to blame and arrest labor agitators. The Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to decimate the communists and assume unaccountable power in the name of “public safety.” An alleged terrorist threat is a way of using fear to block popular objection to the exercise of arbitrary government power.

In order to be “safe from terrorists,” the US population, with few objections, has accepted the demise of their civil liberties, such as habeas corpus, which reaches back centuries to Magna Carta as a constraint on government power. How, then, are they safe from their government? Americans today are in the same position as the English prior to the Great Charter of 1215. Americans are no longer protected by law and the Constitution from government tyranny.

The reason the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution was to make citizens safe from their government. If citizens allow the government to take away the Constitution, they might be safe from foreign terrorists, but they are no longer safe from their government.

Who do you think has more power over you, foreign terrorists or “your” government?

Washington defines all resistance to its imperialism and tyranny as “terrorism.” Thus, Americans who defend the environment, who defend wildlife, who defend civil liberties and human rights, who protest Washington’s wars and robbery of the people in behalf of special interests, all become “domestic extremists,” the term Homeland Security has substituted for “terrorist.” Those who are out of step with Washington and the powerful private interests that exploit us, other peoples, and the earth for their profits and power fall into the wrong side of Bush’s black and white division of the world: “you are for us or against us.”

In the United States independent thought is on the verge of being criminalized as are constitutionally guaranteed protests and the freedom of the press. The constitutional principle of freedom of speech is being redefined as treason, as aiding an undefined enemy, and as seeking to overthrow the government by casting aspersions on its motives and revealing its secret misdeeds. The power-mad inhabitants of Washington have brought the US so close to Gestapo Germany and Stalinist Russia (which is starting to look better than our current situation) that it is no longer funny. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to see the difference.

The neoconservatives have declared that Americans are the “exceptional” and “indispensable people.” Yet, the civil liberties of Americans have declined the more “exceptional” and “indispensable” that Americans become. We are now so exceptional and indispensable that we no longer have any rights.

And neither does the rest of the world. Neoconservatism has created a new dangerous American nationalism. Neoconservatives have given Washington a monopoly on right and endowed its military aggressions with a morality that supersedes the Geneva Conventions and human rights. Washington, justified by its “exceptionalism,” has the right to attack populations in countries with which Washington is not at war, such as Pakistan and Yemen. Washington is using the cover of its “exceptionalism” to murder people in many countries. Hitler tried to market the exceptionalism of the German people, but he lacked Washington’s Madison Avenue skills.

Washington is always “morally right,” whatever it does, and those who report its crimes are traitors who, stripped of their coddling by civil liberties, are locked away and abused until they confess to their crimes against the state. Anyone who tells the truth, such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, are branded enemies of the state and are ruthlessly persecuted.

How does the “indispensable, exceptional nation” have a diplomatic policy? How can a neoconized State Department be based on anything except coercion? It can’t. That is why Washington produces nothing but war and threats of war.

Wherever a person looks, whatever a person hears, it is Washington’s threat–“we are going to bomb you into the stone age” if you don’t do what we want and agree to what we require. We are going to impose “sanctions,” Washington’s euphemism for embargoes, and starve your women and children to death, permit no medical supplies, ban you from the international payments system unless you relent and consent to being Washington’s puppet, and ban you from posting your news broadcasts on the Internet.

This is the face that Washington presents to the world: the hard, mean face of a tyrant.

Washington’s power will survive a bit longer, because there are still politicians in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the NGOs in Russia, who are paid off by the once almighty dollar. In exchange for Washington’s money, they endorse Washington’s immorality and murderous destruction of law and life.

Rome was powerful until the Germans ceased to believe it. Then the rotten edifice collapsed. Washington faces sooner or later the same fate. An inhumane, illegal, unconstitutional regime based on violence alone, devoid of all morality and all human compassion, is not acceptable to China, Russia, India, Iran, and Brazil, or to readers of this column.

The evil that is Washington cannot last forever. The criminals might destroy the world in nuclear war, but the lawlessness and lack of humanity in Washington, which murders more people as I write, is no longer acceptable to the rest of the world, not even to its European puppet states, despite the leaders being on Washington’s payroll.

Gorbachev is correct. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a debacle for the entire world. It transformed the US from the “city upon the hill,” the “beacon for humanity,” into an aggressive militarist state. Consequently, Amerika has become despised by everyone who has a moral conscience and a sense of justice.